Research & Humanitarian Manager

Girls Not Brides is seeking a Research and Humanitarian Manager to lead the secretariat’s efforts to bridge research and practice and foster effective action to address child marriage, including in humanitarian contexts.[1] This role will be responsible for supporting a better co-ordinated global learning agenda on child marriage, and ensuring that the learning needs and evidence of member organisations informs national and global learning priorities.

The Research and Humanitarian Manager will also lead on identifying evidence based solutions to ending child marriage and support married girls in humanitarian contexts, supporting Girls Not Brides’ regional teams in their work with our members and National Partnerships, and ensuring our external advocacy work is promoting greater investment in to address child marriage in humanitarian settings.

The successful candidate will have a track record of work on gender equality or child protection including in humanitarian contexts, experience of synthesising and communicating research and inter-agency working.

About Girls Not Brides

Girls Not Brides is the only global partnership entirely focused on creating and sustaining a worldwide movement to end child marriage, and ensuring that this movement leads to tangible change for the girls at risk or affected by the practice. We are a network of 1,500 civil society organisations in over 100 countries, all committed to working in partnership to end child marriage. Our vision is a world without child marriage where girls and women enjoy equal status with boys and men, and are able to achieve their full potential in all aspects of their lives.

Our members are diverse. They vary in size, location, and the type of work they do. They include groups focused on research and advocacy as well as programme implementers and service providers working directly in their communities in a variety of contexts. Our members address the issue of child marriage from various perspectives, including health, women’s and girls’ rights, child protection, education, economic empowerment and general development.

The global partnership is supported by the Girls Not Brides secretariat with teams in UK (London), Mexico, Kenya, India and Senegal and has an annual budget of approximately £5 million. The secretariat coordinates and supports the activities of the Global Partnership in line with our 2017-2020 strategy, which was developed in consultation with 500 members and partners.

The Secretariat plays three broad roles in relation to our membership:

• A central support and coordination body for the only global civil society partnership to end child marriage.
• A representative of and advocate for civil society on efforts to end child marriage.
• An expert resource on child marriage, and central actor in the global movement to end child marriage.

This role sits within the Learning and Partnership Development Team, which works to strengthen the capacity of the members, including through building an understanding what works to end child marriage and support married girls. The job-holder will also work closely with regional teams and the External Engagement Directorate. This specific role will focus on bridging research and practice by helping to build consensus about solutions to address child marriage, collating and sharing research and evidence, and using this to support Girls Not Brides members’ work and advance knowledge and practice among the broader movement to end child marriage.

Salary: £42,000-£50,000, depending upon experience, plus a generous benefits package. This salary range is applicable to a London-based role and will be adjusted as appropriate for roles based elsewhere.

Place of work: London or Nairobi with enhanced flexible working options

Accountable to: Head of Learning and Partnership Development

Key responsibilities

Manages a coordinated and harmonised research agenda on child marriage

• Leads the new Child Marriage Research to Action Network, a co-ordination mechanism being co-led by Girls Not Brides and the UN Joint Programme to End Child Marriage to facilitate learning and exchange between researchers and practitioners.
• Develops and manages a mechanism to track new and on-going research in relation to child marriage.
• Leads efforts to ensure a more equitable ecosystem of knowledge generation and learning bringing in practitioners from the Global North and South in to share learning on what works to end child marriage.
• Reviews and synthesises findings from the latest research and evidence related to child marriage through research digests and other knowledge products.**
• Works with the Safeguarding Manager to ensure research projects involving children and young people are compliant with all relevant standards for ethical research.**

Ensures latest evidence on child marriage on humanitarian contexts informs humanitarian policy and practice

• Builds and maintain relationships with key researcher, NGOs and UN agencies across regions affected by humanitarian crises to build evidence base around what works to address child marriage in humanitarian settings.
• Develops evidence based thematic briefs and other materials to support the partnership’s work in relation to humanitarian contexts.
• Works with the External Engagement team to identify high level advocacy opportunities (events and meetings) to increase focus on child marriage within humanitarian responses and ensure relevant actors scale up their efforts to address child marriage in humanitarian contexts.

Support Girls Not Brides regional teams and members with humanitarian work in selected countries

• Supports regional teams to develop and implement strategies to address child marriage in humanitarian contexts, including opportunities to strengthen support for member organisations to influence humanitarian action in relation to child marriage.**
• Represents Girls Not Brides on the Middle East and North African Regional Accountability with a focus on identifying research needs and tracking new research in the region.**
• Works with the Learning and Partnership Development team and regional teams to identify strong humanitarian organisations at national and field level, to join the national movement to end child marriage.**
• Ensures a strong humanitarian lens is integrated into child marriage messaging frameworks developed by members.
• Maintains an updated record of research and evidence on child marriage in humanitarian contexts in selected countries, and synthesise learning from members’ programmes in these contexts.
• Works with the Safeguarding Manager to undertake protection mappings for women and girls in humanitarian contexts.
• Supports the Safeguarding Manager with case management and follow-up case support and coordination in humanitarian contexts.

Contributing to the overall work of the Learning and Partnership Development Team

• Works with the Impact Delivery Manager to ensure we are developing compelling stories of impact.
• Supports the Learning and Partnership Development Team to lead on capacity strengthening and learning initiatives for Girls Not Brides members.
• Responds to enquiries from members and partners about latest research and resources related to child marriage.
• Contributes to the Learning and Partnership Development Team’s work in other priority areas.

Contributing to secretariat-wide work

• Contributes to cross-team planning, design and evaluation of projects and initiatives.
• Supports the Communications Team in responding to media requests and external enquiries on relevant thematic areas.
• Represents Girls Not Brides to external audiences on relevant thematic areas.
• Develops content for the Girls Not Brides website on relevant thematic areas.

Responsibilities of all staff members

• Commits to the mission and vision of Girls Not Brides, putting them at the forefront of all planning, work and actions.
• Upholds the core values of Girls Not Brides in all areas of work and interactions with colleagues, members, partners and other stakeholders.
• Complies with Girls Not Brides policies and processes, with particular note for safeguarding, the code of conduct and data protection.
• Ensures that internal databases and monitoring information are kept fully up-to-date.
• Commits to ongoing personal development and learning.
• Fulfil any other reasonable requests for the advancement of Girls Not Brides

Person specification

Essential

• Post-graduate qualification in a relevant area (such as public policy, development studies, humanitarian studies, international relation human rights, refugee rights or gender issues) OR proven experience in a related field.
• Significant experience in a similar research-based role.
• A good understanding of approaches to improve the lives of adolescent girls and promote gender equality.
• Programmatic experience of addressing gender equality and or child rights including in fragile states and/or humanitarian settings.
• Experience of inter-agency working and ability to convene partners from different sectors and backgrounds.
• Experience of ethical research which involves direct work with children or young people.
• Knowledge and experience in implementing PSEA elements of the Core Humanitarian Standards on Quality and Accountability and other related tools and frameworks.
• Excellent ability to analyse and synthesise complex information and turn it into accessible materials.
• Strong commitment to the aims and values of Girls Not Brides
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Proficiency in French
• Proficiency in the latest versions of all MS office suite, Dropbox and Google Drive.

Desirable

• Proficiency in Spanish or Arabic.
• Field experience in a conflict, disasters or forced displacement settings.
• Policy and/or programme experience of working on addressing harmful practices including child marriage or FGM.
• Multilateral experience

[1] By “humanitarian contexts” we mean contexts of sudden onset or protracted conflicts or natural disasters, contexts in which other events represent a critical threat to the health, safety and wellbeing of communities (e.g. epidemics, famine and environmental emergencies), and situations of forced migration resulting from these events.